I’ve been experimenting with painting laser engraved items. I want the engraved portion to be painted. First try was using a paper tape mask and a sacred geometry vector.
I used a paint pen to fill in the engraved portion. It was obviously not going to work once I removed the mask. There was a lot of bleeding and very little paint in the grooves. Paint pen wasn’t the best choice. A high tack tape might work better.
The next two attempts at color filling the engravings were with spray paint and the same tape. The first design, sacred geometry, was a vector so the groove would be small. The next design I’m using has a raster area that I enlarged using offsets.
I gave it 2-3 coats letting the paint dry in between. There was bleeding in to the surrounding wood fibers. I’m guessing it’s the end grain soaking up the paint. Even after a lot of sanding it wasn’t a crisp and clean as I had hoped.
My third design is another Japanese vector of waves and ship sails. I wasn’t able to offset the vectors to make the engraving larger so I tried defocusing the laser. I moved the table down two clicks. Not exactly precise details. This is the masked piece just out of the laser. The black paint is remains from the previous attempt. The engraved portion is surprisingly not the scorched brown. I hit is with 2 light coats of spray paint. Made an effort not to soak the tape in paint. I’m happy with the third attempt. The next test is trying to repeat the results.